


In Pursuit Of Gold

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Blackstone and Gold [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Dragons, F/M, Fantasy, Lore - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Multi, Original Character(s), Original Universe, Plot, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 11:26:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16743106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Dragons are thought by many to be quite extinct; others think it likely they were never real to begin with, and that they were always mythical. As is so often the case, almost everybody is completely wrong, albeit in different ways to one another.This story will contain dragons (neither extinct nor mythical), librarians (ditto, although closer than dragons to mythhood), knights, journeys, and most of all, an awful lot of gold. Gold is very,veryimportant.





	1. Prologue: The Unfortunate Arthur Gonthor

_Arthur tosses his hair back as he looks forth, his knees pressed tight to his great steed's sides. The mountain had seemed intimidating from its base, larger than the hills around and with grey smoke furling out in slow, foreboding circles from the cave mouth near its summit: now, with only a small path standing between the prince and his quest's completion, Arthur feels a tightness in his chest._

_The dragon had long plagued the kingdom with its monstrous presence, stealing sheep and maidens alike from all about the land, but now it is to him, Prince Arthur of Gonthor, hailing from the Royal Palace of the Golden City to the North, to end the beast's reign of terror – once and for all._

_"Stay here, Pennyflower," Arthur murmurs as he clambers from his horse, and his response is a quiet huff of sound: Pennyflower stands obediently in his place, and Arthur catches his helmet from her saddlebags, settling it upon his head. His armour is heavy, but not so heavy as his heart - already he knows how he will speak of this deed to the girls in the palace gardens, how it weighted on him to be forced to kill so majestic a beast._

_Women are always so amusingly charmed by false confessions of regret._

_Puffing out his chest, he moves forth with quiet clinks of metal, and he walks slowly and stealthily through the cave's entrance, keeping himself close to the side of the small tunnel, looking forwards through his visor and into the-_

_Light?_

_Sunlight beams into the cave through glass around the ceiling of the cave, forty or fifty feet from the cavernous room's perfectly carpeted floor: to the side of the room is a large, marble-finished fireplace, and a fire flickers there, sending smoke up through the chimney to the top of the mountain. Up some stairs carved into the very wall of the cave, on its own platform, is a four-poster bed trimmed in purple, and upon its mattress lies a strikingly beautiful girl, her skin golden-brown and glistening with sweat in the sun._

_What a prize she'd be, once the dragon was slain. He might even forgive her the purple bedclothes, for purple is a dye reserved only for the highest echelons of society, but then again, perhaps she is indeed a princess. Perhaps she is doubly valuable, and Prince Arthur has been as lucky as ever._

_This obscene room is a cave in the side of a mountain and yet almost normal in its furnishing and its making but, perhaps, for the gigantic dragon before him. It is curled in an onyx-shining ball of scales and teeth, the eyes behind its closed lids no-doubt not much smaller than Prince Arthur himself._

_Nonetheless, with the monster sleeping, he has time to wrench his sword through the monster's brain while it still slumbers, and he strides forwards. At the very first clink of his heavy armour over the threshold of the cave, those eyelids rise and reveal eyes that shine blue-green like the shallow seas on a summer's day. It stares at Arthur, as still as a statue, and after a moment's pause frozen in the beast's golden gaze, the prince retrieves his resolve._

_With a warcry, he raises his sword and runs forwards, and the last things he knows are the extraordinary length of the dragon's teeth and their dripping black venom, the startling purple of monster's tongue, and the sweltering heat and burn within the confines of his armour as the world goes red with flame._


	2. Chapter One: An Unwelcome Interruption

Regina shifts in bed, slowly opening her eyes and yawning behind her hand: the room is suddenly hotter than it had been, and there's a familiar, if no less revolting, scent of burning flesh and heated metal from the floor below. She crawls forwards, peering down from the foot of the bed, and watches as the soot-stained knight in armour falls to the ground with a clatter, his sword letting out a singing ring of expensive metal.

"I never did like my meat roasted in tin," Regina says casually, resting her chin on her hand and looking down at the dead man with a mildly amused expression. Her voice breaks the silence, low and slightly hoarse, each vowel clipped and controlled by an upper-class upbringing. "It's always better over a fire."

"What a ruthless and callous thing to say before the newly crisp corpse of a gallant knight," the dragon below rumbles in a voice that might have shook the mountain (had he wished it), settling back on his hind legs and dragging his claw over the metal before him: Ladon's tone is teasing, for neither of them have any issue at all with murdering trespassers. "I do like it when you react so to murder."

"What can I say? I'm hard-bitten."

"Are you indeed? By whom?" Flirtation with him is always more than exciting, and even now, months after settling into this particular cavern with half a day's walk to the nearest village, Regina is entirely content. Why wouldn't she be? He's a _dragon_.

"Why, you, Ladon, if you'd like to come back to bed." The scent is swiftly dispersed with the dragon's blowing the air toward the chimney, and he shifts carefully to face the platform: the cavern is broad and the ceiling is high, but he can never be too casual about moving lest he smack something over with his tail – occasionally said something is Regina herself, after all. She never tires of watching this transformation, however, once he's in position: he rests his head on the edge of the platform, a single one of his teeth the length and width of Regina's thigh and his eyes wide and iridescent, and with a noise like playing cards being shuffled, his body begins to collapse in on itself, beginning at the tail. It's fascinating, watching the barbs fold in on themselves at the tip before drawing back into his body and then towards his neck.

Once the process reaches his head, he morphs, head heightening somewhat and becoming thinner and more vertical, and there stands Ladon, sleek grey hair sprouting at obscene speed from his head as his skin lightens to a deep brown rather than obsidian black, though his eyes retain their usual golden colour, a little too shiny to be dismissed as a human brown. He's entirely naked, but his body is carved of muscle and his cock is fairly generously made – though not as generously as in his own form, Regina supposes. With that in mind, she's ambitious, not suicidal. "Does that tickle?" Regina asks, leaning back with a smirk and spreading her legs slightly, gesturing for him to kneel between them.

"Not really," Ladon answers easily, moving forwards and kneeling as indicated, his hands settling on the mattress either side of her hips.

"Not even the hair?"

"Not even the hair," Ladon murmurs, and he drags his lips over the surface of her belly before giving a smirk. "Why, would you rather me bald?"

"No, I don't think so," Regina answers in a light tone, reaching out and drawing her hands through the thick, grey locks before pulling the dragon forwards slightly, "It gives you a more distinguished look."

"You don't think it makes me look old?" Ladon asks, leaning even closer until their faces are only a few inches apart, and she laughs.

"How old are you? Sixty times my age?"

"Something like that," comes Ladon's well-humoured answer, and then he leans to kiss her. For all she makes fun of him, twenty centuries has made Ladon a fabulous kisser. They kiss for a while, her drawing her lips over his, their foreheads together, and he draws his hands down, sliding his fingers and ever-so-warm palms over her thighs. She laughs when he squeezes at her right knee, suddenly ticklish, and then she drops onto her back, watching him with lidded eyes as he pushes her legs a little further apart and shuffles further back on the mattress again.

Regina closes her eyes, arching her back slightly to better push her head back against the pillow, and braces herself: she's always liked a little attention from the mouths of men (or women, really), but Ladon's ability in this department somewhat eclipses that of any other living being. After all, what other man has the ability to lengthen and fork his tongue at will?

She draws in a little breath as Ladon drags the flat of his tongue over her cunt, flicking through the open, slight wetness of her entrance before it presses against her clit, twisting itself in a way a regular person's tongue could never; he circles it with a quick movement, and she presses her eyelids tighter together, letting out a gasp as he suddenly sucks at the sensitive nub. She's not entirely ready, not yet, but she feels her body tingle, feels herself become hotter between her legs as her blood rushes downwards. Regina grins as Ladon sucks a little harder, trying not to squirm, and her draws back, drags his tongue over her lips, dipping inwards.

"Gods, that's hot," she mutters, half-surprised by the heat in his tongue.

"That's the point,"

"No, that's not— _oh_ —" she gasps in a sharp breath as he thrusts his tongue forwards, inhumanly long and pressing right inside her, drawing against the roof of her cunt. "Ladon!"

She hears laughter, but she knows the sound of it is being pushed straight from his mind to hers; his tongue is still buried in her, twisting in a way that's strange and foreign but always tremendous. He keeps on, drawing back and continuing his ministrations on her lips, her clit, before pressing forth two fingers. She opens her eyes, looking down at him, and she has to laugh – with the tilt of his head and the thickness of his hair, it looks like she's wearing some awful, grey merkin, and she can't help but giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asks as he thrusts his fingers into her, pressing his thumb against her clit in regular circles. He draws his head back, peering at her with a good-natured grin twisting his lips.

"I just looked like I'd bought a badly-fashioned wig for a second," Regina answers, and he rolls his eyes.

"I swear, one day I'll get you to actually lose your ridiculous sense of humour in the bedroom," he threatens, and she grins at him, showing all her teeth.

"Feel free to try, darling," she says easily, and cuts herself off with a sharp exhalation as he scissors his fingers wider than should really be possible. He lets something tingle in them, and then she gasps in the breath she'd just let out, grasping tightly at the sheets as he lets magic soak through his skin, sending vibrations through her. She can never quite manage when he lets his fingers vibrate like this, and she trembles, closing her eyes tightly again and biting hard at her own lip, arching her back again and clenching tightly around him. Alright, so, just perhaps, he'd be able to make her lose her sense of humour like this, but only if he kept it up for a little bit.

She can feel him leaning down but as he presses a third finger inside her and presses his thumb tightly against the side of her clit, affecting his fingers to shake faster, more powerfully, she can't open her eyes to watch what he's doing. She realizes after a second, of course – his tongue is wet and sudden against her left nipple and then he blows and he _knows_ she hates it when he does that and puts cold air on it once it's wet.

"Oi!" she says sharply, and he laughs, leaning forwards again and sucking a mark into her skin. "I'm not— I'm not forgiving you for that, Gods,"

"I'm not forgiving you for that blasphemy, then," Ladon retorts sweetly, and he licks over the mark he's left, making her let out a slightly indignant whine of noise before she laughs again, wriggling underneath him. “Dragons are _holy_ creatures.”

"I wish you'd take this more seriously."

"I've got my fingers buried in one of your orifices, my darling, how serious can I be?"

"Well, very, if you're using words like orifice!" she feels him grin against her neck, and then he draws his fingers out of her, grasping at her hips and flipping them over in a rapid movement: she opens her eyes and looks down at him, her thighs spread around his, and she shakes her head as she shifts forwards, lining his cock up against her. "You're an idiot."

"By your standards, I'm a genius," Ladon replies, but he shuts up when she lowers herself down in one sharp movement. He grunts, eyelids fluttering closed, and then says lowly, "Like a sword in a sheathe."

"As if you know anything about swords," Regina says, and rolls her hips downwards. She likes it like this, likes to ride him in this position – he can reach her clit easily and she can feel every inch of him spreading her open, and it's always gloriously good. She shifts her waist slightly before beginning to thrust herself down in regular movements, with Ladon thrusting up to meet her. Ordinarily, she knows, he'd make some retort as if he does know something about swords, but he struggles to talk once he's excited enough.

It does give her a certain amount of satisfaction to render the man speechless.

He presses his hand against her belly, thumb dipping just above her clit again, and he sends a vibration forwards that tickles through her stomach instead of tingling through her clit, "Ladon!" He laughs at her, as is his usual nature, and she smacks his shoulder. He lowers his hand slightly, pressing against the sensitive flesh instead, and she leans, drawing him into another slow kiss as she thrusts herself down, feeling his cock wide and pulsing inside her, feeling the hot, electric burst of tension build in her lower belly behind her clit. She draws back just slightly, biting hard at her own lip and breathing deeply as she keeps her forehead against his, and his other hand roam freely as hers settle flat either side of his chest, his fingers playing over her nipples and playfully, if only for a few moments, tightening around her neck.

With the other hand against her clit, she's helpless, and she comes before he does, gasping as she feels the pulse and sudden break of tension through her body, shuddering with her orgasm as she tightens her thighs against his and gasps into his mouth. He chuckles, pressing a peck to her nose before thrusting faster. It's wonderful to feel the pulse of his cock as she enjoys the aftershocks of her own orgasm, riding it through, and once finished she flops, suddenly a bit fatigued, against his chest.

As some benefit, at least Ladon isn't wet with sweat.

"My thighs hurt," Regina complains.

"That's because you're unfit. You should ride me more often, build up the muscle there."

"Or I could ride a horse," Regina points out.

"That would be indecent, but as ambitious as I would expect of you." Regina laughs, pressing her face into his chest and trying not to think of that awful mental image – she's almost embarrassed on his behalf because Ladon says things like that, but she's well aware that she makes far filthier jokes at other people's expense. She pulls herself up, lying at his side with her body pressed against his. "Are you going to eat something?"

"Mmm, yeah," Regina says, "In an hour or so. There's bacon left from what I bought in the village on Saturday, and I'll cook that with some bread." In the room beneath them is a larder kept chill with carefully placed runes on every wall, the magic serving to cool the room: it's easy to keep meat for weeks down there, and it means she doesn't often have to trek to the village.

Living with Ladon as long as she has, there's a certain comfortable routine to the trips to the villages of the Sweetlands from the base of the mountain. The Sweetlands are a wide plain that go on for miles upon miles to the west of the peak in which Ladon’s cave is situated, populated with hundreds of villages before one reaches the first city. To the east, through the small range of other mountains, of course, there are cities little more than a few weeks' travel away, to the town she'd been raised in, but...

Well. The isolation is actually rather nice, if Regina is being honest.

She and Ladon speak, they take walks together, and she practises her swordplay, her gymnastics… She likes people, of course she does, but to spend time alone like this, with just one other person, it’s _nice_. Especially when that person is Ladon.

"I do wish I didn't have to," Regina mumbles. "Your way seems far easier." He laughs. Dragons, she had come to discover when she was let in on the secret as to who Ladon was – or _what_ Ladon was – don't eat. They just live on magic like faeries, and hoard gold as a conduit to do so. She'd been riveted when he'd first expressed the process to her, explaining the natural rivers of magic through the universe, at the way gold draws in and channels those intangible, invisible rivers better than any other substance: she'd been given a vague approximation of how animals and people digested their food, and had understood how little faeries converted their diets of berries and leaves to raw magic rather than energy, but Ladon's way is completely different. If magic runs like a river, after all, he's effectively a bloody pond.

Ladon never has to cook anything.

Regina hates cooking.

She crawls away after a few more moments, pulling on the thin, silken dressing gown at the side of her bed. "Where are you going?"

"Our lovely knight probably tethered his horse outside," she answers, "They usually do."

"I was joking about riding it, you know," Ladon says, tone teasing as he arches his silver eyebrows. She throws an unlit candle at him and he catches it, giving her a mock-offended frown. Regina steps easily down the stairs carved in the side of the wall, hiding a yawn behind her arm as she steps neatly over the dead man's body and out through the cave entrance. She knows full well that he won't have had a party with him; they never think to bring one, even though it'd make more sense than just rushing into danger alone, simply because of the glory that would come with having killed a dragon alone.

But Ladon says no human has ever killed a dragon, and she's not exactly inclined to believe otherwise. He is, after all, the expert.

She pads down the passageway barefoot and squints a little in the light outside, peering a few metres away from the cave mouth to the white horse stood obediently beside a thick outcrop of stone. It doesn't seem especially shaken up, and she moves forwards, gently unbuckling its saddlebags and its harness. These she sets aside, and then she undoes the leather fastenings of its reins as well, leaving it free of any human interference except for the shoes on its feet.

Regina pats the horse's side, looking at his face for a few moments – she does miss horses somewhat, as she'd grown up around them, riding them to and fro, grooming them every morning, but living with Ladon doesn't really leave room for them. Animals of an equine persuasion have an innate fear of dragons, and any horse that comes close feels the magic in Ladon immediately and becomes skittish.

"Off you go," she says, patting its rump, and the horse peers down at her, mildly perplexed. "Ladon!" she calls inside, "do the noise!"

There's a short pause as her command echoes through the corridor and into the room inside the mountain, and then there's a loud, piercing screech: the sound seems to echo from beneath a gigantic throat, like the very tongue the sound has bounced off is covered in jagged edges, and the horse's eyes widen before it runs as quickly as it can down the mountain path.

The Sweetlands stretch for miles around, but people pass by the mountain every day, and Regina is certain someone will come by the horse eventually and take it home: it won't take more than a few days, probably, as horses are in high demand to travel from village to village, and it will be well-treated. Nothing around here is big enough to prey on horses except Ladon.

She hefts the saddle onto one of her shoulders, wrapping the two saddle bags around her waist and buckling them there, and in her free hand she carries the leather strings from the horse's reins: she's come to be quite handy after several years of settling in the mountain, and with the frequency of one adventurer or another coming through, they do have a fair stock of saddles and armour. She sells it in town now and then, or trades various weaponry and armour for more desired objects.

Seafruit are in season, she considers, as she feels the broad, well-worked leather of the saddle on her shoulder. Gods know that she likes the salt-sweet burst of blue juices from the inside of the fruit. They only grow in the forests in Gonthor to the North, and they're not exactly cheap to buy compared to most fruits, but this saddle would buy six or seven of them, in all likelihood. As a young girl, she’d eaten seafruit once in a while, a few times every few months, maybe.

She takes a moment – just a moment – to consider how bizarre her life has become, that she thinks of saddles in terms of their value in fruit, and admires her place in life. Regina truly has done well for herself.

"Horse is gone," Regina says, glancing at Ladon. He's bent over the knight's corpse, plucking at his armour with his fingers and frowning.

"Mmm," he says, "This is a prince, you know."

"Oh, really? Very nice," Regina says absently, dropping the leather pieces aside and then sitting on the floor, rifling through the saddlebags. "I hope he wasn't the heir."

"No, I recognize the crest on his mail," Ladon answers easily, "I believe he was sixth or seventh in line to the throne, something like that. Probably why he had so much time to wander into caves and get himself killed." Regina sorts, pulling open a pouch from one of the bags: sapphires glitter inside, and she rolls her eyes.

Of course he's a prince. No one else carries treasure like this just for fun.

She picks out the silver coins from one of the pouches, setting them aside, and then she pulls out a heart-shaped locket carved of gold. She doesn't recognize the sigils on it, but she can see from the age of it that it's probably haul from somewhere or other, and she throws the necklace to Ladon.

"Ooh," he says lightly, "I've not seen one of these for years..."

"Because necklaces are so rare."

"It's a locket of Kariana. One of the Dimmed Kingdoms." He says all this softly, and though she can hear him she knows he's almost forgotten she's there. "This would have been worn by one of the princesses. It says, _The gardens of light offer peace_ ,” he adds, tracing the unfamiliar words carved around the hearts.

"What's that mean?"

"Oh, in centuries past, the garden of light was a more common metaphor for that of the Sun Gods' offered resting place," Ladon says, with a nod towards the sun streaming in through the window. "The Palace was still considered to be the paramount residence in one's afterlife, but the garden was one's initial impression."

"Fascinating," Regina says dryly, in a tone that plainly states she is not fascinated at all. The Sun Gods are worshipped all over the continent, but she never went to chapel as a child, and the whole idea is somewhat lost on her. Supposedly, the Sun Gods inhabit the sun above, and upon one's death one joined them in the Palace there – the Gods had apparently endorsed the first founding of the Bright Kingdoms, too.

There are six Bright Kingdoms in the world, she knows, but once upon a time there were nine, and the ones that have since died or dispersed are known as the Dimmed Kingdoms. Kariana used to be to the North East, leagues and leagues away from the mountains here, but Ladon has been all across the world in his time. Unfortunately, he's more interested in the history of the world than she is.

"When it was Bright it was beautiful," he says dreamily. "In the capital, Jakarna, there was a shining tower of pure gold—" his eyes glaze over at the mere thought, and she watches him for a second, trying not to laugh. In anyone else, that misty-eyed expression would be based in admiring the splendour of it: in Ladon, it’s more similar to the average glutton regarding a banquet table.

"And now?" Regina prompts, her tone mild.

"Oh, when the royals fell, the tower was soon disassembled," he says mildly, remembered disappointment on his face, "Melted down for coins and the like."

"Shame," Regina says, without any real sympathy, and he tuts at her, leaning his head forwards and letting the necklace come down over his neck. The heart settles against his sternum, and he reaches up, running a hand through his hair and watching her for a second or two. It's with an odd look on his face, quietly nostalgic, and she arches an eyebrow in silent question before asking, "What?"

"You're not annoyed I haven't offered this to you?"

"What do I want a princess' necklace for?" Regina asks, scoffing.

"Well, you know, loving tokens and all that—"

"Oh, shut up," Regina says, because he actually looks nervous – two thousand years old, and he still worries he's not doing a relationship right. "The only loving token I need from you is a bit of you in an orifice."

"Any bit of me?" Ladon queries, "I've been looking to rid myself of a kidney—"

"You're disgusting." He meets her gaze for a second.

"We're having this conversation over a dead body," he points out, perhaps not entirely unreasonably.

"Yeah," Regina agrees reluctantly. "But you're still disgusting." Before he can retort, she turns back to the last leather bag in front of her. She draws out a diary of sorts, bound in goat's leather, and glances through. The gone-for prince of Gonthor has – er, _had_ – terrible penmanship, but she can read the dates and the places he'd written alright – he'd travelled far and wide. What she pays more attention to is the accounts he'd kept in the back, sloppily done and with imperfect maths, but with some pretty appealing numbers.

"You know," Regina says, "You could get a lot of gold doing this."

"You've never offered me any gold," Ladon says in a blunt fashion.

"No, not for _sex_ ," Regina says, shooting him a glare. Ladon looks far too pleased with himself – dragons, she thinks, are much like cats in that regard. They’re naturally smug. "Adventuring and the like. He doesn't just try and kill dragons."

"Well, not anymore..."

"He goes through ruins, rescues damsels, et cetera. He's only just got back from some abandoned castle in Gros! Look at all the coin he earned, and all the treasure." She offers Ladon the book, and he lets his gaze flick swiftly over the tocked-up numbers. His mouth is set in a thin line of concentration, his silver brow furrowed and his eyes concentrated on the page. Regina does enjoy the isolation of the mountain, that much is true, but they could easily travel on together, and even on foot, she knows they could get something done.

"I'm trained to fight," Regina points out. "Dame Redwater of Dervla town, knight in shining armour."

"How long did you serve as a knight, again?" Ladon asks sardonically.

"Three months, but only because you whisked me away," Regina argues, but both of their tones are light-hearted. Her family are nobles in Dervla, governing the town and the villages within ten miles or so, but in the midst of the countryside Dervla was very much safe. Crime wasn't ever much of an issue, and they were too far from forest or wild land to be plagued by anything too dangerous – even after gaining her crest and her armour, knighthood had been more than uneventful, and she'd become bored. When Ladon had come into town, she'd only thought he was a sorcerer from the school on the other side of the kingdom – she'd had no idea what he really was until a few weeks later.

"You are a worthy warrior," Ladon says in absent-minded agreement, drawing his fingers over the leather of the book, and then he says, "It's a good idea. I would be very glad to accompany you, if you should like to travel so." He unfolds the leather cover, dropping pieces of fabric from inside, and Regina frowns at them, plucking one of them from the ground and peering at it.

"It's a quest contract," Regina says lightly, "Five hundred gold pieces to be paid upon the slaying and proof of slaying the dragon of The Grey Mountains." Ladon grins, and Regina grins right back.

"Feel like slaying a dragon, Dame Redwater?" he asks, tone playful.

"I do, sir, indeed I do."

**Author's Note:**

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